1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a gaming machine which rearranges symbols after varying and displaying the symbols.
2. Description of the Background Art
In recent years, there have been proposed a slot machine which includes presentation effects causing a plurality of kinds of bonuses, whose expected amounts of obtained payout amounts are different from one another to occur when a bonus game is triggered and a slot machine which diversifies a variation of bonus games by adding presentation effects causing a bonus game to develop from a first bonus game to a second bonus game.
Besides the conventional method of a bonus game in which a fixed amount of a payout is provided, there is a slot machine having presentation effects added therein which vary payouts obtained by playing a plurality of free games or retrigger such free games (for example, refer to U.S. Pat. No. 7,824,261).
However, there has not been a gaming machine configured to include a progressive jackpot, which allows a large amount of a payout to be obtained by accumulating a portion of a bet amount for a base game, in one of a plurality of kinds of bonus games, provided that after occurrence of triggering a bonus game, branching into the plurality of kinds of bonus games is conducted and further, looping of the bonus games is conducted. In the conventional slot machine, drawing for a progressive bonus game is executed by a drawing process distinct from a drawing process for the base game and is not regarded as each of drawings in a plurality of kinds of the bonus games.
However, when the progressive bonus game is configured such that the branching of the plurality of kinds of the bonus games is conducted and another bonus game is retriggered after one of the bonus games, it may occur that after the progressive bonus game which is likely to allow a large amount of a payout to be obtained, the bonus game which provides a small amount of a payout is retriggered. Therefore, in view of the mind of a player, even if the bonus game in which a player can obtain only the small amount of a payout is executed after the progressive bonus game has been executed, such presentation effects come to be less likely to attract the interest of a player. Thus, the present inventors have focused attention on the point that it is preferable to suppress the occurrence of the bonus game providing the smaller amount of a payout after the progressive bonus game.